Just a short post today, to share a great article with you. Francis Thompson’s How I made sure all 12 of my kids could pay for college themselves is an excellent read. His final sentences – “We were and are not our kids’ best friends. We were their parents.” – are key. And so many of the points he made rang true to me. Much of it sounds like my own childhood (although I was one of four, not twelve), other than the sports and activities section. My own parents took the opposite position on that one, limiting extracurricular activities significantly so that family time was kept as the priority. As we got older, extracurricular activities were added in, but always in small quantities. Our kids are still very young, so it hasn’t really been an issue for us yet. Our plan is to look at activities on a case-by-case basis, balancing our kids’ interests with our own desire to not overload our schedules (our own or our kids’) and our belief that unstructured time (assuming a TV is not involved) is great for both kids and adults.
But most of the article sounds just like how I was raised. Homework came first. DIY was a major part of our life (my parents were forever buying run-down houses and we all worked together to fix them up). We had to demonstrate that we could change the oil and a tire on the car before getting a drivers license. We knew from a very early age that obtaining scholarships or looking into student loans to pay for college was one of our top priorities, and our efforts were encouraged along the way by my parents (all four of us have college educations, funded primarily by scholarships). We were also encouraged to set up our own bank accounts at an early age, saving money throughout our childhood to pay for college. When I was seven, college seemed like an eternity away. Today, ten years seems like the blink of an eye. It is never too early to start encouraging kids to save and plan for the future.
Parenting is certainly not an easy job. There’s a magnet on my fridge that says “Peace Corps: The toughest job you’ll ever love.” I agreed, until I became a parent. Parenting is definitely harder, but even more rewarding. And we’re constantly learning as we go. I feel fortunate that both my husband and I had strong role models in our own parents, giving us a good starting point. But we’re still figuring all of this out, just like all the other parents I know. Thompson is obviously a seasoned veteran when it comes to parenting, but even he notes that they made plenty of mistakes along the way. But articles like his are a great reminder of what we need to do for our kids (teach them how to live life to its fullest and handle whatever life throws at them) and what we don’t need to do (buy them everything they want, do everything for them, fret about upsetting them, etc.).
I hope you guys find it as helpful and inspiring as I did!
thompsonsaraht says
DIY is such an important thing to teach your kids. I remember as a kid, I wasn’t even allow to change a tire on my bike, that’s was something a grown up had to do. Same goes around the house, I never learned to cook. When I got out on my own, I lived on TV dinners and Ramen. Hamburger helper was my idea of a gourmet meal.
I don’t want that for my kids so my 2.5 year old helps me in the kitchen every day. Sure, it’s mostly just pouring and stirring right now, but she’s right there with me. I’m considering getting her one of those plastic lettuce knives and letting her help cut veggies. Maybe for her birthday.
In a couple more years, I’m going to start taking her to Lowe’s and Home Depot for their monthly kids projects. She has a tablet and she downloads her own (free) apps and she started learning to use the trackpad on my laptop just this week. I’m not trying to push her, she’s loving every bit of it and gets upset when I am doing something she just can’t help with.
frugalbabe says
I agree. Every once in a while I catch myself saying “no, let me do that instead, you’re too little…” and then I stop and think about how I can make whatever it is safe for our little ones to do or at least help me do. Our five year old made cookies last night almost entirely by himself, and he was thrilled. Nothing motivates learning fractions and measurements like following a recipe to make cookies :-)
Jen Guzman says
I really like this article (and I love your blog ;-). I think he is spot on. However, I have a feeling this guy is a Mormon. Which means his kids probably went to BYU, which is a ridiculously cheap education if you are Mormon. I should know because I went there and paid my way through on a small scholarship and the money I saved during the summer – no loans. I won’t really encourage my kids to go there (despite the awesome price) and realize that I will need to meet them halfway. While I’ll definitely strongly encouraging savings and scholarships, I just don’t think paying for a college education is realistic for our kids without heavy loan subsidy. I don’t want them starting out life in debt. So I will help them.
Who knows? Maybe the financial landscape will completely change for our kids (mine are in elementary school) and it won’t even be an issue?
I don’t mean to take anything away from the article and the family, who seem like the real deal and definitely a great example in good parenting.
frugalbabe says
Jen, I assumed when I read the article that they were Mormon or Catholic, simply because it’s relatively unusual to have that many children otherwise. We’re atheists, so we obviously would not be encouraging our children to go to any sort of religious school (and I had to set aside my assumptions about religion when I read the article, because I really liked the rest of it!). What we’ll encourage instead is that they attend an in-state public university. We currently live about 20 minutes from the university where my siblings and I went to school, and there are two other public universities within 90 minutes of our house. If we’re still here when our boys are ready for college, one of those is the obvious choice. There’s also a great community college about 20 minutes away, and we’d encourage them to consider doing their first two years there. We’ll also encourage them to take full advantage of the AP classes that the high school offers, and the option to take community college classes during high school, paid for by the high school (double bonus… you get credit for high school and college at the same time, and it’s free). We’ve been saving in 529s for them since they were born, so we’ll have dedicated resources for helping them out. But for an undergrad degree, we’ll make it very clear that they should be choosing from among the local schools, unless they manage to get a full scholarship to somewhere else.
kellygroves13 says
I am torn on this article. I agree with some points, not so much on others, and then I’m not sure where I feel on still others. My 5 year old says I am her best friend now, and that is fine…she doesn’t have a lot of frame of reference, but she is definitely starting to have her “best” friends at school. Growing up my parents were definitely my parents, not my friends, and I think that is why I am able to consider my parents some of my best friends now. I was always jealous of my best friend in high school because she was so tight with her mom and the relationship was really more of a friendship, which of course seemed cool when I was 15, but now they don’t have a very good relationship and she says that is why.
We are just starting to have to have rules about homework. As a kindergartener, my daughter usually only has homework over the weekend, and sometimes once a week. We read every night, but I know that we need to develop homework rules. In my house, homework was always done first, unless there was an extracurricular activity, in which case it was done as soon as we returned from that if said activity was directly after school. These rules loosened up a bit as we got into high school, but by then my siblings and I had a good track record in getting our studies done. I think that public universities are great, but I do wonder if even those will be cost prohibitive in 12 years. My husband and his siblings had their undergrads completely paid for (they paid for their own advanced degrees, and they all have them or are working on them). My sisters and I are all still paying student loans. My parents made it clear to us growing up that they would help with college and weddings, but were not financing them completely. What I wish they would have done a little better is taught us about money. Or maybe I just wasn’t a very good listener on that front. My dad was always talking about saving and “deferred gratification”, but I think maybe it wasn’t what I wanted to hear so i didn’t pay attention? Anyway, I want to be able to help my kids with their education, but not pay for it fully, but I also don’t want them to start out with hefty student loan payments. I graduated college 12 (13?) years ago and am still paying.
With a family as large as his, I am sure the stringent rules were necessary for everything to run smoothly. I can’t believe they all had to be involved in a club and a sport. I would think the parents must have been running every which way constantly! Right now we enroll our girls in things sometimes and other times we don’t. At the moment we aren’t doing anything and I love it. I do think swim lessons are a must. My older daughter took them and I will be enrolling them both this summer. To me it is just is a safety thing…
Anyway, this article gave me a lot to think about! Thanks for sharing!